Serving in a Rape Zone

By Allison Tobey

Several female soldiers died of dehydration in Iraq because
they did not drink liquids in the afternoons in an effort to avoid going
to the latrines at night, where they were afraid male soldiers would rape
them. The news broke several months ago, when in January 2006, Col. Janis
Karpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib, testified at the Commission
of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration
that the female soldiers died of dehydration while sleeping at Camp Victory,
an army base near Baghdad.
As reported by Majorie Cohn (Karpinskis interviewer during the Bush
Commission) in www.truthout.org, Karpinski stated that Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, former senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, ordered that dehydration
no longer be listed as the cause of death on the death certificates of
the women. Because of this, the exact number of women who died because
they were afraid they would be raped cant be determined. According
to Cohn, Karpinski explained in a September 2004 interview to U.S. Army
Col. David Hackworth, There were no lights near any of their facilities,
so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night.

In 2004, Christine Hansen of the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization
supporting victims of violence in the military, reported that according
to the Department of Defense, A survey conducted by researchers
within the Veterans Administration concluded that one third of female
service members deployed during Desert Storm and Desert Shield were challenged
by physical sexual harassment, with 13 out of 160 respondents reporting
sexual assault. The comparative analysis conducted by the researchers
indicated that the rate was a tenfold increase above the civilian rate
during the same time period. Camp Victory proves no different, as
Karpinski also said in another interview that 83 incidents of sexual assault
had been reported in Iraq and Kuwait within a six-month period. How is
it that these numbers went unnoticed and disregarded by the military,
leaving women in the trenches vulnerable, unprotected, to the point of
fatally endangering their health?

The answer to this question is found in the Armys response: as Karpinski
revealed to Cohn, Sanchez stated,The women asked to be here, so
now let them take what comes with the territory. m